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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

LED Selling- Door to Door is Dead

Jim, a friend of mine who runs a small veterinary clinic, told me an amusing story the other day. He
had just finished giving a young poodle its annual shots, and was
standing behind the front counter updating the patient’s records when in
walked a most curious gentleman.Clearly,
the poor chap apparently couldn’t read, or didn’t read well, and had
sauntered by the no-soliciting sign on the door to “hawk his wares.”Now,
I am not a critic of door-to-door selling. I sold many boxes of
doughnuts in High School to support the marching band and I lost count
of the number of boxes of chocolate bars the neighborhood helped me
consume for the ROTC. Whatever a person does in their profession, short
of it being illegal or harmful, is okay with me. The point here is the appropriateness and the correct channel of product distribution. I am
making fun of no one!So,
in walked the door-to-door salesman. Jim, my friend the Vet, had seen
all types of door-to-door peddlers since the clinic opened in 2002.
There had been Avon ladies, Fuller-Brush sales-types,
Tupperware-oriented dealers, a person selling Irish cheese and even an
investment rep from a St. Louis firm selling mutual funds. All of whom
believed the no-soliciting sign did not apply to them (for some reason).“In
he walked rolling a large black metal case, like a suitcase on wheels,” Jim
related, “He wheeled it up to the counter area, popped the top open to
reveal an electronic sign and proceeded to plug in the device to an open
receptacle without asking.”“I can tell you that Mrs. McGuire was there with her 3 long-haired dachshunds and they went berserk!” “Then he turned on the display to reveal the most God awful light show I’ve ever seen!” Jim said. “Somehow the yellow light with the red glare reminded me of a carnival I once went to as a kid!”“This
is an LED sign that every business on your street is buying. Dave, next
door, the CPA, said you guys might like a quote on one of these to help
your business, so I thought I’d come on in!”Jim
had already been thinking about an LED display and had interrogated me
the last time I took my dog, Sassabelle in for her shots.He already
knew the LED sign facts. Jim was was just dismayed that this type of
product was being sold door-to-door with an instant and unwanted
demonstration by someone who really seemed to be a sales novice just
“shotgunning” the businesses on the street.“You
know,” Jim said later to me, “The display I really want will probably
wind up costing $30,000 and that’s a lot of money! It’s like buying a
nice car.”“What next? Will the Chevy salesman come into my clinic trying to sell me a new Malibu?” he joked.A
live, on-site, LED sign demonstration is an excellent way to take the proposed LED project from the concept stage to a three
dimensional and “real” experience. No
doubt the LED sign demo is an effective and recommended strategy and many
sign companies use this approach. But this attempt by the door-to-door LED sign
sales guy, extemporaneous and unsolicited as it was, minimizes and
marginalizes what is usually a specialized and involved big-ticket
transaction. This creates a very dubious impression to the astute
client. In one breath the LED sign marketing concept is introduced and
in the next breath an offer of monthly financing terms is announced.Talk about an assumptive close!Jim,
the Vet, accessed his computer and Google. He found that had he bought
into this offer, the door-to-door salesman would be paid off, never to
be seen again, once his deposit was received. The continuity of care and
service is fractured as soon as the deal is consummated. This is not
“cradle to grave” service as provided by the best domestic LED
manufacturers.In
the last 5 years, I’ve seen advances in the LED display industry and
improvements in quality and a trend towards simplicity. Like any
product’s life cycle there is momentum to make the products more “plug
and play”. Perhaps there will be a day when the customer will walk into
Costco or Sam’s Wholesale Club and load their 4’x8’, P-16, RGB display
into the back of their Ford F-150 and take it back to their business.
There they will clip it up to some simple frame by themselves, like a
customer does today with a 60-inch Vizio TV from Wal-Mart.That day is not today. Know
your manufacturer, ask a lot of questions, scrub their Website and
visit them if you can and always ask for references. Some U.S. based,
LED manufacturers can “WOW” you, and provide in-depth consultation and
great support with world-class customer service. But the casual and
impromptu door-to-door unsolicited selling effort is best left to
lower-priced items so if it turns out to be a poor choice, all you’ve
lost is $2..99 and a candy bar you may not have needed anyway. You never know when the door-to-door salesperson will become the “invisible man”. Seems to happen with predictable regularity.

The usual disclaimer: all posts, reflections, writing, and other mutterings of opinion are mine, and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of Vantage LED, unless I specifically state. I provide "food for thought", one opinion amongst 300,000,000 in the USA. What is YOUR opinion? Email me at michael@vantageled.com and tell me what you think.